Behind The Scenes of the Farmers Market Veggies Shoot

This is the kind of beauty I get to photograph when working with my favorite food stylist, Alise Arato and favorite prop stylist, Amy Paliwoda. This is the behind the scenes of our Farmers Market food shoot.

I try to test with Alise and Amy as often as we can. With our busy schedules, it’s hard sometimes.

Testing is very important for you to do as a photographer. This is where you fall in love with your photography all over again. You are shooting for yourself with no clients around, and we shoot what ever we want.

Amy’s actually great at art directing and coming up with fun ideas because she has all the props, so she’ll think of some things that she would like to photograph to show off her talents, and her collection of props.

Amy runs The Surface Library and she is always getting new and fun props in there that she wants to showcase. In this shot above, she just got this beautiful gray surface, so that was the first inspiration.

We decided to shoot at Amy’s house with natural light.

Above is Amy’s pet, Peeve. No, seriously, her furry critter’s name is Peeve. She’s terribly sweet and because we didn’t put our surface on apple boxes, she logically thought our set was the floor.

When we are setting up, Amy will start figuring out what props we want to use, so we’ll place some into the frame and start taking some snaps. This is when I get my lighting and exposure sorted out as well.

Super simple set. Natural light from the left through a window, and a fill card on the right. Easy.

We’re getting south facing light so Amy’s curtains are a perfect diffusion while the sun is higher in the sky.

Here’s Alise prepping our pretty veggies for the shoot.

So we did one shot, then we go out to a fun lunch to catch up, and start again in the afternoon.

By this time, the sun is behind lots of buildings, so though it’s still light outside, the inside of the apartment is getting darker.

Tech Specs: I’m using my Canon 5D Mark III with the 24-105mm lens, on my Gitzo tripod with a tripod head extension arm.

It doesn’t matter that there’s less light. I just adjust my exposure accordingly to a very long shutter speed to let more light into the shot. I did open the curtains to let in as much light as I could because there’s no more direct sunlight.

Those of you that say your house is too dark to shoot in, I beg to differ.

Just one more pic of our very concerned assistant:

There you have it. Another little sneak peak with some simple shots.

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